The 'Change the World' Personality

Excerpted from
The Productive Narcissist: The Promise and Peril of Visionary Leadership
By Michael Maccoby, Ph.D.

When I first noticed the "change the world" personality growing in numbers and importance in the business community in the early '90s, I began to investigate the shared traits that distinguish these leaders from the CEOs of the past. I was also curious about what societal changes were taking place that encouraged and rewarded the "change the world" personality, pushing them to the top of the corporate hierarchy. Throughout my career as a student of human development and its relation to work, I've used an interdisciplinary approach, combining concepts from psychoanalysis, sociology, anthropology, economics, and history. My background as a psychoanalyst teaches me to look for patterns of behavior, drawing on family history and dynamics, peer relations, the factors that influence personality development, and, in particular, what I call productiveness or living up to one's potential. My training as an anthropologist directs me to observe the context in which certain personalities develop over time, cultural factors interacting with economic events and market forces. Over the years, I've used a variety of clinical methods, including structured interviews, Rorschach tests, detailed questionnaires, and psychotherapy. I began my work in companies as a participant observer of the anthropological "tribe" of the business community, and over time have become an observing participant as a business consultant to CEOs and managers.

The emergence of a new kind of leader caused me to reexamine all of my theories about leaders and personality. I went back to the psychoanalytic teachings of Sigmund Freud and the psychoanalyst and social philosopher Erich Fromm (1900-1980) and sifted through thirty years of experience inside corporations, working with CEOs both as a consultant and psychoanalyst. I rethought my understanding of historical figures and literature. What emerged surprised me. The psychological portrait of today's business leaders that takes into account their personality traits, describing how they achieve innovations, engage followers, and react to the euphoria of success as well as the stress of setbacks, most closely fits the normal personality type that Freud called narcissistic: "People belonging to this type impress others as being 'personalities'; they are especially suited to act as a support for others, to take on the role of leaders and to give a fresh stimulus to cultural development or to damage the established state of affairs." In other words, these are the type of people who are most likely to say that they want to change the world.

I'm using the term "narcissism" to describe some of the most important business leaders in the world; but how could a word that's become synonymous with all sorts of self-centered behavior-a sense of overall superiority and entitlement, a lack of empathy or understanding of others, the need for constant attention and admiration, and overall arrogance-apply to them? These days, in both the psychiatric field and in colloquial conversation, "narcissism" has become a term for egoism, egocentricity, or just plain bad manners. But I believe the concept of narcissism has been widely misunderstood ever since Freud coined it after Ovid's pathologically self-involved creature from Greek mythology. I want to bring about a radical new definition of the term and the way we think about leadership, and show you how your understanding of productive narcissism can help you.

If some of today's successful CEOs exhibit traits of narcissism but don't fully fit the negative stereotype, how would I describe them? The characteristic that I first noticed about them-the desire to change the world-is not necessarily a requirement of this type, but it is representative. Others may look at the world as a place that needs changing, but only a narcissist believes he can change it. The narcissistic personality, as I am defining it here, rejects how things are for how things should be. Narcissists do not react to the external world so much as they try to create it. I first thought about this when a narcissistic CEO I was counseling told me, "I didn't get here by listening to people." As soon as he said it, I realized that he was absolutely right. When he said "here," he didn't necessarily mean the top of a billion-dollar health care company (although that's exactly where he was); what he meant was that his entire life had been an exercise in shutting out the chorus of voices that told him what, or what not, to do. This is the best way I can describe the narcissist without going into a full psychoanalytic portrait: They never listen. Narcissistic vision always starts with a rejection of the status quo. Most of us are told what to do by various authority figures throughout our lives-go to school, get good grades, wear the right clothes, watch certain TV shows and movies, adopt the right mannerisms and language, learn a marketable skill, go to college, date and eventually marry the appropriate person, go to the "in" spot, network in a certain social set-and most of us do these things in order to fit into society or get ahead at work. Narcissists simply don't listen to or hear the demands of authority.

This is one way of explaining Abraham Lincoln's early form of rebellion-reading. With the perfect vision of hindsight, we look at Lincoln's disciplined self-education and reading as a sign of his ambition, a desire to raise himself above the family business. But he came from an agrarian culture that placed a high value on farm labor and skills and almost no stock in reading or book learning. There was no reason for Lincoln to think that he was improving himself by reading; in fact, the historian Douglas Wilson's research shows that his contemporaries thought of his constant reading as a combination of laziness and defiance, a way of avoiding the labor of the family farm. His cousin said: "Lincoln was lazy-a very lazy man-He was always reading-scribbling-writing-Ciphering-writing Poetry." A neighbor and former boss said: "Abe was awful lazy: he worked for me-was always reading & thinking-used to get mad at him." His friends and family saw him as a rebel who didn't listen to his father or boss; I see him as a narcissist who rejected the social demands in favor of his own vision, one that wasn't reinforced or encouraged by his peers. Lincoln had his own idea of how he should live his life, and he went about achieving it in spite of the early, negative consequences. There's a long list of contemporary narcissists who dropped out of school. Jim Clark was kicked out of high school for telling his teacher to "go to hell"; Bill Gates left Harvard without graduating; Steve Jobs talked his way into Reed College (without paying for tuition or room and board) and then never went to class-all of which is usually misunderstood as "youthful rebellion." But narcissists like Lincoln are beyond rebellion-they simply don't recognize any authority to rebel against.

Whenever I lecture on narcissistic leaders, I throw out some examples of narcissists, mixing contemporary business leaders with historical figures. Even after hearing the way I define "narcissism," people still revert to the old stereotype. Abraham Lincoln? He can't be a narcissist-he was an even-tempered altruist, a model of humility and presidential decorum. Bill Gates? Sure, we know he's got a huge ego and a tendency to put other people down, but look at him. He's such a geek-not at all vain or concerned with his image. And he gives so much of his money away to charities. Oprah Winfrey? She's so open about her doubts and fears, letting everyone know about her personal struggles with sexual abuse and her own body image.

Every time I hear reactions like this, I realize how hard it is for people to think of narcissism as anything but a negative. If you're like most people, you think a narcissist is a vain, self-centered egomaniac. But this is a description of behavior-and most likely, bad behavior-rather than a portrait of a personality type. For example: Your boss runs a small service company. He's an insecure jerk who has a tendency to check himself out in the mirror while fixing his thinning hair, makes you pick up his dry cleaning, and is constantly screaming: "How come I'm the only one who does anything right around here?" This person is probably not a narcissist; he's a rude, selfish egotist.